Vineyard: Utah's small town with a BIG FUTURE

Developer turning old Geneva Steel site's industrial past into expansive future.

Summary:

Megaplex Theater:

• first IMAX screen in Utah County

@geneva Development:

• Vineyard expected to increase from about 465 residents to as many as 27,000 in less than a decade
• "a shortage of developable land and booming real-estate markets drive one of the most ambitious projects seen in Utah County"
• a town center rivaling those in nearby Orem and Provo
• a Utah Valley University satellite campus
• a transit hub centered on FrontRunner and, perhaps, TRAX
• three Interstate 15 interchanges
• nine stoplights

Geneva Steel:

• 1,700-arcle site
• one of the largest U.S. brownfields west of the Mississippi River
• built by U. S. government for World War II
• factory located inland to lessen chance of Japanese air strike
• six decades of mill operations
• known for "air pollution that once belched from the mill and clung to the sky"
• Anderson Development acquired site for $46.8 million in 2005 bankruptcy proceedings
• polluted areas — about 140 waste-management units
• contamination from volatile organics, heavy metals, petroleum byproducts, and other potentially health-threatening compounds
• seven years spent moving tainted soil, slag, building waste, scrap metal, and other mill remnants
  estimate of total volume of concrete increased from 150,000 to 2,100,000 cubic yards